UK awards first round of carbon storage licences

 

Spirit Energy, owned by British Gas’s parent company Centrica, is among 12 companies offered 20 licences to stash carbon dioxide in depleted oil and gasfields off the British coast, Financial Times reports.

 

Sites include areas near Aberdeen, Teesside, Liverpool, Lancashire and Lincolnshire.

 

The awards mark a step forward for efforts to develop an industry to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions from factories and others struggling to abandon fossil fuels.

 

Several companies have used carbon capture and storage to extract oil from depleting fields but using the technology to reduce emissions is still at a very early stage.

 

There are currently no active carbon storage sites in the UK, but the government wants about 30mn tonnes, about 9 per cent of current emissions, to be stored each year by 2030.

 

The strong appetite for the licences — 19 companies applied — reflects the growing commercial case for the technology given a fivefold surge in the price UK polluters have to pay for carbon dioxide emissions over the past five years.

 

Developers also hope to eventually store carbon dioxide imported from polluters in continental Europe and elsewhere, making best use of the UK’s waning oil and gasfields.

 

Lord Martin Callanan, minister for energy efficiency and green finance, said Britain was in “prime position” to “grow

our economy by becoming world-leaders in this developing industry”.

 

Stuart Payne, chief executive of the North Sea Transition Authority, the industry regulator, said it was an “important day”. 

 

“As a nation, we cannot meet our decarbonisation targets without carbon storage. This is net zero delivery in action,” he said.